THE ROITPELL TRIAL, If RE general impression produced by the long
and weary trial of a cause which is certainly the most remarkable of our time, is that much remains to be revealed concern- ing the life, and perhaps also the death, of old Roupell, the smelter of doubtful property, and concerning the son of whom "every one" was so "proud," the miserable man who has brought himself to hopeless degradation, and his family to ruin. William Roupell is at present placed in this peculiar ,position—it is to the interest of his own family to believe the full story of his crimes, and to the interest of his other vic- tims to believe only a part of it, while no one can possibly lay that the word of a perjured man should have any cre- dence whatever attached to it, especially when there is still the shadow of a suspicion that his object is to benefit himself. It is clear that William Roupell Was himself the victim of iothers, and Serjeant Slim points to his uncle, Watts, whose name turns up every now and then in the case, as the instigating cause of his extravagance and his siumerous crimes. But whoever may have been the evil spirit at his back, William Roupell has shown that the temp- tation to defraud others was always potent with him. If the temptation came as a palliative to conscience, affording him an opportunity of making some reparation to his family, we might well infer that it would be irresistible. He could gratify his instincts, enrich his father's pluneered house, and perhaps himself share in the rescued booty at a future -day—an accumulation of golden chances that the defendants in the action just brought to an end might suppose would easily lead him to add another sin to the long list he has already confessed. But he is sincerely repentant, we are told; and let us hope it is so. Some of the reporters this week have ex- patiated with evident astonishment on his coolness and uncon- cern at Chelmsford. It would be interesting to know how these gentlemen expected him to behave. Roupell must have anti- cipated his present position for years, and now that he is in it, it is probably not more terrible than when he was simply dreading it afar off, and trembling lest his own shadow should be that of his pursuer. His bearing seemed to us to be simply that of a man who was listening to the story of another's crimes, having no more concern in it than any one of the by- standers. He has accommodated himself to his altered cir- cumstances, and seems as familiar with his gaolers as if he had been intimate with them for years,--and it would have been better for society if they had been intimate with him for years. Mr. Bovill dwelt strongly upon the fact that when his sister was called he turned faint and was taken away, and insisted that this showed there was some dreadful secret between them—but every one who passed to the witness-box had to brush the very shoulder of the con- vict, and surely there is nothing surprising in the cir- cumstance that he should have shrunk from meeting his sister face to face there, and dreaded to hear the poor girl badgered in cross-examination. Far too much was said of his demeanour, and Mr. Bovill's harshness had the bad effect of producing some feeling of sympathy for him in court, whereas up to that time the sympathy had been all in favour of the defendants. It is not quite clear why the popular feeling should go entirely with the mortgagees, since, though they have been badly used, the convict's aged mother and his penniless and ruined sister and brother have been still more cruelly defrauded. If we must import sentiment into the case, let all the innocents fall in for a share of it.
The case just tried is intrinsically very intricate and in- volved, and was made more perplexing by the extraordinary mass of irrelevant evidence introduced into it. Shorn of all this surplusage, the points at issue lie in a small compass, though it is not possible to divest some of them of a certain degree of mystery. William Roupell's original confession, repeated in substance at this trial, before Mr. Baron Channel!, was that after his father's death in September, 1856, he forged a will leaving the property to his mother, and naming himself as the executor, and that during his father's life he also forged a number of deeds of gift of various estates in his own favour. One of these deeds of gift related to the Great Warley estate, which consisted of two farms, and formed the subject of the trial at Chelmsford. This deed, like the others, was prepared by a solicitor named Whitaker, to whom Roupell had been introduced by his uncle Watts, and whose conduct is one of the unexplained mysteries of the transaction. For Whitaker raised money on these deeds of gift without ever seeing the father to ascertain whether he authorized them or not, and once, when a Mr. Longman declined to advance money unless the father joined in the se- curity, Whitaker helped to raise the money from another source. In this particular instance of the Great Warley deed, Whitaker asked Roupell for his father's authority, and ac- cordingly a letter authorizing the transfer was brought to him, written by Sarah, and bearing the old man's signature. Now the signature to this letter is alleged by William Roupell to be a forgery, and Sarah could give no information whatever with regard to it. She only knew that she wrote it at the dictation of her brother, and that he took it away to get it signed. Here the first doubt in the defendant's favour arises—must not the old man have heard of this letter from his daughter? Why should William Roupell run the great risk of discovery which he incurred by getting his sister to write it ? But in reality the letter is a strong point for the plaintiffs, because in it there is a mistake in the description of one of the deeds which William Roupell had made in another document, and this mistake the father himself had corrected. Moreover, these words occur :—" The forms of leases I have already given to him "—that is, to William. Now, these forms were the forms William himself had forged, and of which the old man had no cognizance. This is a point of very great importance. But it may be met upon the hypothesis that the father signed the letter without knowing its contents, the son's influ- ence over him being very great.
The real leases of the two farms were at rentals of 250/. and 78/. respectively. Roupell forged leases increasing these amounts to 560/. and 170/ , by which means he was enabled, of course, to raise a larger sum by mortgage. The pro- duction of the original leases by the tenants proves that the new ones were forged, as stated by Roupell, and so far we have it undisputed that two at least of the documents which accompanied the deed of gift were forgeries. Acting, however, upon the supposition that they were genuine, Whitaker had the deed prepared, Roupell took it away, and in a few days brought it back signed by his father. This signature he also alleges to be a forgery. It was attested by two witnesses named Truman and Dove, both of whom seemed to be mere instruments in Roupell's hands. Indeed, the influence he gained over every one with whom he was brought, into contact is one of the most striking things in his extraordinary career. Ultimately 12,000/. was advanced upon the deed by the present mort- gagees, and the estate was claimed back by Richard Roupell, the real heir-at-law of the deceased.
Did old Roupell sign his name to this deed? The wit- nesses who attest his signature both swear they did not see him, and affirm that it was their impression they were attest- ing William Roupell's signature only to a lease of a house. "I signed it," says Truman, "from believing that he would not lead me wrong, and because he was holding a high charac- ter at the time." And being much pressed in cross-examina- tion, he said that he had noticed some writing above the place where he was to sign, but did not read it. Here arose one of those small points which so often have a great effect in a complicated case. Roupell was asked by Baron Channell to explain the fact that Truman and Dove signed as attesting the signature of his father, who was not even present when they wrote. His reply was, that he covered the attesta- tion clause with his hand, or with a piece of blotting-paper, so that they could not see it. But on the sixth day of the trial a witness was called who had examined the signatures and clause by means of a binocular microscope, and who swore, without doubt, that the ink of the " p " in Roupell was under the loop of the " h " in the signature John Tru- man" and Truman himself stated that he saw writing. This is not the only discrepancy in Roupell's statement, as we shall presently see. There being, therefore, no positive evidence that the father did sign the deed, except the presence of the signature itself, the question on which the body of proof accumulated was whether that signature was forged or not. Days were occu- pied in calling witnesses to prove that the signature was not like the old man's, and afterwards, on the other side, that it was like it—the plain fact being that it sufficiently resembled the original to deceive those who knew old Roupell's hand- writing best. The plaintiffs had relied upon certain peculia- rities in the real signature which the defendants conclusively showed were often absent, and this was the short and not very momentous result of hours spent in listening to clerks and experts. The signature itself would certainly not lead the jury to any decision upon it, one way or the other, especially as there are other circumstances which must have produced considerable effect on their minds.
It was important to ascertain what were old Roupell's intentions with regard to this particular property. Now, it was in evidence that he frequently expressed to his tenants his intention of giving the estate to his son William, and that the copyhold portion was actually surrendered to him so far back as June, 1855. On the defendant's part it was alleged that this surrender was only made in order that young Roupell might get the property enfranchised. The genuine will of 1850 was destroyed by William when he forged the will of 1856, and the drafts were burnt by the proctors when the forged will was proved; so that it is impossible to say what were the old man's intentions in 1850. William Roupell affirms that the estate was left to Richard, the present claim- ant; but we have only his bare word for the fact. The defendants might fairly point to the contradictions in his evi- dence—such as that the deed was not stamped, whereas the date of the stamp proved to the contrary, and ask whether he was to be believed. Moreover, we can well understand that a man who knew that he had committed forgery, and knew, moreover, that the discovery of his forgery was inevitable, would not hesitate to accuse himself of one offence the more for the sake of making some reparation to his family, whom he had injured so terribly. What, in reality, is there against the probability that the father gave the estate to the son ? Having told the tenants and several other persons of his intention to do so, it is not incredible that he carried out his promise. The forged will of 1856 left the whole of the property to the widow, but William would still have full control over it as executor. Again, there was another probability in the defendant's favour—whatever for- geries Roupell committed, this particular deed might be genuine, for it is certain that at one time the father meant to give him the property.
But if these circumstances and suspicions are in favour of the defendants, it is impossible not to perceive, upon a dis- passionate review of the whole ease, that there are facts on the plaintiffs' side of the question which seem to outweigh all probabilities. It must be remembered that this is not an isolated forgery. During the years 1854 and 1855 nearly the whole of old Roupell's property was made over to his son. by deeds of gift similar to that in dispute at Chelmsford. Old Roupell was penurious and sordid, and yet he is reprer seated as stripping himself bare during his lifetime for the sake of one son, and keeping it a secret from everybody that he had so stripped himself. It the time of his death the son. had actually raised over 200,000/. by virtue of deeds of gift, which we are asked to believe were given to him by the father who restricted him, at the very time some of the deeds were executed, to the pitiful allowance of 25s. a week. Further- more, when we remember that the father continued to receive the rents for the whole of his property down to the time of his death, and that his son never at any time dared to deal with it as his own, except fraudulently, and that after his father's death he destroyed his supposed right to it by the will which gave it to his mother, wo cannot help feeling that the strong presumption is that this deed of gift is only one in a long series of forgeries. Driven, step by step, nearer towards ruin, involved on every hand to an appalling extent, prompted, perhaps, by wicked advisers, and sinking daily deeper and deeper into a bottomless abyss of embarrassment, this wretched man—scarcely nine and twenty now, and not more than two and twenty when he crept into his dead father's room, and stole his will while the corpse was yet warm—grew desperate in crime, and forged document after document to serve the present wants of the hour, till at last one forgery exposed another, one fraud brought another to light, and he saw it inevitable that the iniquity he had heaped up through six long years of fear, and crime' and shame, must fall upon and overwhelm him. Serjeant Shea succeeded at Chelmsford, in a speech which exhausted his side of the question, in raising some feeling in the convict's favour, for it is not in the nature of an Englishman to kick a prostrate man, or to insult and gloat over the poor wretch who is suffering a bitter penalty for his crimes, and must bear the awful horrors of a life-long im- prisonment. But we must not be led astray by this compassionate feeling. For whom had William Roupell compassion? He robbed his father, beggared his mother, and family, impoverished all who came within his fatal reach, lied, plundered, and deceived with an industrious relentlesa7 nen almost unparalleled in the history of crime. Let no one pity him as though he were the victim, any more than we should pity the assassin who cuts his own hand in dealing a fatal blow at others. Nor must he be surprised, remembering how many hearts he has broken, if, in the living death to which he is doomed, "The world's loud whisper breaking into scorn" occasionally reach his ears, since such a castaway dare not even hope to be forgotten, but must be remembered and pursued. with everlasting infamy and detestation.
Previous page
